The platform allows e-trading of equities from France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the UK and Japan, and will be rolled out progressively to cover other regions later this year.

This product is based on BrokerTec, Icap’s established fixed-income platform.

The interdealer broker has also extended its e-trading of short-dated FX forwards to Asia and North America after their rollout in Europe.

I-Forwards are available for all G10 currencies against the US dollar, as well as for euro/sterling, euro/yen and US dollar/rand. They were launched in Europe at the end of 2004, and have attracted more than 100 customers trading in 15 countries. They have achieved a 35% share of the G10 forward FX market in Europe, a figure Icap hopes to match in the US and Asia.

The system uses data from the EBS currency broker platform, which Icap purchased last year.

A quant at Citi has revived debate about the changing nature of the profession (www.risk.net/2417747). The scope is narrower, he claims; the job has been dumbed down, and today's quants are little more than programmers. Is he right?